


Lucky man

by crimsonepitaph



Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Anxiety, M/M, Mild Language, Pining, Telepathy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:43:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonepitaph/pseuds/crimsonepitaph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared's talent of telepathy makes it a struggle to live in a world that he has to fight to keep out of his mind. Then he meets the mysterious Jensen and everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morrezela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/gifts).



> **Author's note #1:** Title from the Emerson, Lake  & Palmer song.
> 
>  **Author's note #2:** Written for this year's **spn_j2_xmas** round as a gift for **morrezela**. The story is a somewhat coherent mix of likes that caught my eye in the assignment: fairy tale, soulmates, telepathy, chocolate, bakeries, superpowers, pining, time travel. I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope what came of it is enjoyable.
> 
>  **Author's note #3:** I am very grateful for borgmama1of5's help. She proved once again that her patience is infinite - the first draft of this was truly rough, and she sifted through everything, brought the story to something readable. Huge, huge thanks!

_California Institute of Human Enhancement, 2012_  
  
He feels the voices in his head right in his bones, too deep, too strong, fusing with him to take too much of him, drowning him in a ceaseless stream of thoughts that are not his. He reaches, seeks salvation in familiar, in distinct, real enough to break away from it all.  
  
Rain. He hears the drops hit the windowsill in a calming cadence, focuses on the rhythm that’s fluid enough to let the thoughts lance through him without leaving any scars.  
  
The droplets break apart, slither down, create a cobweb that skews his view of the outside. The voices slowly fade.  
  
It’s quiet. Finally.  
  
“Jared?”  
  
This voice is loud in a way only the outside can be.  
  
“Class in twenty minutes.”  
  
Sophia is nice. She almost always says what she thinks, which is a rare occurrence. It’s comforting.  
  
Jared smiles, gets up. Jokes with her, because that’s what he does, that’s what he learned, that’s what this thing has made him. “And you want that chocolate goo that passes for coffee to keep you awake, right?”  
  
 “Don’t mock the masterpiece, Padalecki. That stuff is the drink of Gods.”  
  
Jared raises an eyebrow.  
  
“I still don’t get the point of being able to be in multiple places at the same time and choosing to go to a class at 8 in the morning.”  
  
Sophia sighs, a tad too dramatically, which would clue in any observer that this is an argument they’ve had many times.  
  
“True self, remember? True self for ethics, genetics, and all the practice for the special snowflake thing. Barbie and Ken come out for all the boring stuff.”  
  
“Barbie?” Jared picks up his backpack. “Ken?”  
  
Sophia smiles cheekily, tucks a strand of fire engine red hair behind her ear absently.  
  
“I thought it didn’t mean multiple personalities,” Jared huffs.  
  
Sophia glares at him. “I feel offended.”  
  
“Yeah, well, so am I. Barbie and Ken, really?”  
  
“And this is why I’m changing the names.”  
  
“Because I can’t tell you apart.”  
  
Sophia grins. “Aw. Poor little Telepath.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
She sighs. “Smart, Padalecki. You are so smart.”  
  
Jared sticks out his tongue, and he’s rewarded with the expected laugh.  
  
“Come on, Flakey. We’re getting coffee. It’s my good deed of the day, because no one should be forced to interact with you if you’re not properly caffeinated. It would be a crime against humanity.”  
  
“And I want that other thing. The sweet one.”  
  
“Yes, Master Wordsmith. I will bring you a Danish. “  
  
Jared grins, satisfied.  
  
Sophia adds, with a smirk, “And the number of the new guy.”  
  
He does a double take so fast the world wobbles. Wait, what?”  
  
Sophia waggles her eyebrows in a ridiculous way that makes Jared groan and look away. “He asked about you last week.”  
  
“Yeah. No, thank you.”  
  
“He’s cute. Tall –“  
  
“Sophia–“  
  
“Green eyes– “  
  
Jared’s a little more forceful when he says her name again. She shuts up, looks at Jared with big eyes.  
  
He already feels bad.  
  
But he can’t. He really doesn’t want to. He’s a coward, and he doesn’t care.  
  
Jared doesn’t trust people. He’d heard his own parents think how much easier it would have been if he hadn’t been born. And his parents were caring, loving people. They were just a middle class family that had too little money for too many kids, struggling to find a way to keep four kids warm, well-fed, and healthy, and a roof over their heads.  
  
Happy was rarely on the list. Little moments of bedtime stories, and a walk in the park that was always short, looking up at the clouds that shaped infinite possibilities, seeing his father’s eyes, dark, cloudy, happy in a way that was, somehow, always tinged with sadness – Jared learned good moments never last.  
  
And because of what he was, he knew more than his siblings. He knew the truth behind the feeble play of smoke and mirrors, he understood the worried looks between his parents, better than any child should. That’s still with him. A constant soundtrack that follows him, things that he would give anything not to know, creating the realization that happiness marinates in the liquid fear of all the things he can’t change and can’t stop from happening.  
  
Jared doesn’t like people. He likes his bubble, his own little world where he can pretend, he can believe that everything is alright. That he’s in control. That he can’t be hurt. Jared is invincible in his own head, until someone’s stray thought tears him apart, and he spends hours, days, weeks putting himself back together again.  
  
New people only mean another stream of thoughts that don’t match the outside. Even old friends’ uncomplimentary fleeting thoughts etch themselves into Jared’s mind involuntarily, a slow burn that scratches the foundation of his friendships, friendships that always prove weaker than he hopes.  
  
He feels hopeless, and desperate, and he’s sure he’s the only one, the only one who understands. He sees people around him connect seamlessly on the surface while he sees the deeper parts that paint the lies, the fissures in something that has no chance from the start.  
  
Jared doesn’t want to meet tall, green eyes.  
  
Not now. Maybe someday, when he’s learned how to live with himself, when he’ll understand who he is without the voices of the outside.  
  
Sophia doesn’t agree. She’s told him, countless times.  
  
She has stories, too.  
  
They all have.  
  
Jared doesn’t give her the same speech again. It’s pointless. It’s his truth, but nobody else’s, and sometimes, that’s hard to understand.  
  
He hands a twenty dollar bill to Sophia, and sits on the bench across from the coffee shop.  
  
The sky is muddy gray, heavy and angry, and the ground is wet, and there are drops of rain in his palm, dampening the mark on his hand, and everything’s quiet again.  
  
Sophia waves at him from the crowd inside, waiting in line – and he smiles back, but it feels hollow inside.  
  
He feels like he’ll never be right.  
  
Such a simple thing. And he can’t.  
  
Maybe there’ll come a day when he’ll wake up and see sunshine.  
  
Jared holds on to that.


	2. Part One

_Los Angeles Police Department, 81st Station, 2015_  
  
The grey in his head is monotone, lifeless, soothing. Ripples of dark blue bump against his walls, fragments of whispers and footsteps and scars, but they don’t leave marks, not anymore, and Jared smiles as he walks down the hall.  
  
 He’s missed Sophia. Her unexpected not-through-channels call got him over as quickly as he could manage.  
  
“Agent Padalecki, welcome to our humble home,” a familiar voice greets him in a level tone, with a subtle inflection that only Jared understands. Jared could pick that voice out of a hundred in his head. He could choose it from a thousand from the outside.  He hears sarcasm, and the emphasis on his title mixed with genuine affection. He can’t blame her. Jared feels like a little kid with a sheriff badge a lot of the time – like he’s merely pretending to have more authority than he actually does. Or should have.  
  
“ _Detective,_ ” he says, because he’s just that dumbly happy to hear her, and because he missed her, and because when she smiles two twin dimples come out, and Jared feels better, like he did something right.  
  
He doesn’t wait for a response, just hugs her, all supposed professionalism – on Sophia’s side, at least – left somewhere in all the memories of their past.  
  
She clears her throat when it seems that Jared’s on the verge of squeezing all the air out of her lungs, and he lets go, takes a step back.  
  
“Slumming it with the rest of us today, huh, Padalecki?”  
  
“Yeah, took a break from saving the world and stuff.”  
  
“You wish, Flakey.”  
  
“ _Agent_  Flakey, Soph.  _Agent_. I’m super important now.”  
  
“Sir, yes, sir.” She pauses, looks Jared dead in the eye. “The hair still looks like you never owned a comb in your life.”  
  
“They like me like that.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“My posse.”  
  
“Your  _posse,_ ” she says, staring at Jared. “Right. Would that be your imaginary one? Because I thought we had this talk.”  
  
Sophia can joke like that. She can, because as well as he knows her, she knows him like the back of her hand too.  
  
“Aw, Soph. I knew you missed me.”  
  
“You wish, Padalecki,” she says with a smile that finally reaches her eyes. “Are you ready for the interrogation today?”  
  
Jared never is. He hates letting down his carefully constructed barriers to deliberately sift through the disarray of another’s thoughts, especially a criminal’s, and it takes considerable effort to rid himself of the mental debris afterward. It is much easier to operate as Agent Padalecki, where he uses his ability to sense abnormal emotions in a generic way in order to locate lawbreakers before they can act.  
  
“So, who am I interrogating?”  
  
“John Smith, twenty-four, a, um, robbery suspect.”  
  
“I’m guessing that’s not why you called me.”  
  
“Well…when we raided his house, we found a lot of…weird stuff.”  
  
“Weird? Like, Barbie and Ken weird or just normal weird?”  
  
Sophia looks at him, sighs resignedly.  
  
“Barbie and Ken don’t come out to play anymore, Jared. This isn’t your special little unit at Major Crime Prevention.”  
  
Her tone is lower, and there’s too much that Jared can read into it, too many things he doesn’t want to see.  
  
 _Superiors._  
  
Jared and Sophia were two of them. Last statistics put about a thousand of them all around the world.  
  
People with abilities. Super-powers. Better, faster, worthier.  
  
Superhumans.  
  
Except they weren’t superior. They were broken people who didn’t fit in the world. Or maybe this world, this planet, this time wasn’t meant for  _them_. Carving out a place for themselves meant laws didn’t apply to them because their abilities reject the mundane, the normal  _–_ and the possibilities they represented were too much for the Normals to accept.  
  
The Normals – because putting a label on what’s  _normal_  was a swell idea from the start –were supportive at first. Back when Superiors meant hope, and dreams, and unlimited possibilities.  
  
Superiors were flawed – that was their downfall. Not flawed in the most technical sense – their abilities were sensational, unbelievable, extraordinary, and a myriad of similar words that newspaper front pages were so fond of – but, ultimately, their powers were limited by the foundation of humanity underneath them. The imperfections that built the depth necessary to understand the world were the shortcomings of the soldiers, the leaders, the forces for better they were supposed to be – an annoying hindrance to what everyone saw as the road to a brighter, better future. Superiors came to showcase the spectacular failure of the human race to accomplish the impossible perfection humanity craved.  
  
Jared’s one of the lucky ones. Major Crimes Prevention is the uninspired title of a little unit out of the FBI that deals with cases involving Superiors, or, more often, getting in the middle of cases that could benefit from their abilities.  
  
Sophia is lucky, too. She works a normal job, has a normal husband and two perfectly  _normal_  kids.  
  
 _Normal._  
It’s a weird, sometimes confusing in-between – now that Normals realize that Superiors aren’t the salvation of humankind, a convenient and blissful ignorance that works as long as the precarious balance isn’t disturbed too much – as long as they stay inside the neatly drawn lines.  
  
Jared tries for a smile that slides into lie way too easily.  
  
“Ah, but that’s not true. When you had me over for dinner a few months ago, Em and Ash told me that, and I quote,  _Mommy makes dinner and studies her books and plays with us at the same time_.”  
  
Sophia pauses for a second, then curses under her breath, and a welcome memory of the old Sophia invades Jared’s mind.  
  
“Damn it. Really kind of hoped they weren’t old enough to understand that yet.”  
  
“They don’t, I think. Not really. I don’t think they get that you’re not like everybody else’s Mom. They don’t know it’s not normal.”  
  
“Which is what got us into trouble into the first place,” Sophia says, and she looks down, picks up a file from her desk while Jared struggles to find a retort to that.  
  
She’s angry, she’s sad, she’s resigned to leading a life for which she didn’t ask. Jared watches as she tucks a strand of auburn hair behind her ear, but he must get a little lost in the motion, in the background buzz that’s filled his head, because when he focuses again, she’s looking at him expectantly.  
  
He clears his throat.  
  
“Soph– “  
  
“Nope.”  
  
Jared pauses for a beat. “Ever so eloquent.”  
  
“That word-a-day app paying off, huh?”  
  
“Sometimes I really do wonder why we ever talk.”  
  
Sophia grins. It’s way too easy. “Because you have no friends, Padalecki, and need me to take care of your ass.”  
  
“A, my ass is perfectly fine and B, I have friends. Lots.”  
  
She arches an eyebrow.  
  
Jared inhales, prepares for a response, remembers all the arguments he’s ever won against Sophia, and wisely decides to admit defeat before the damage to his ego becomes too big.  
  
“I could have friends. It’s a possibility, you know? Your lack of trust in my social skills is truly astounding.”  
  
Sophia snorts. There’s a pause where only the broken rhythm of their uneven footsteps rings out.  
  
He falls back on the joke. “People can’t resist me. It’s because of my outstanding personality.”  
  
He gets an elbow in the ribs for that. Which is entirely unnecessary.  
  
“One day you’ll get why it bothers me so much when you say stuff like this,” she whispers softly, almost to herself, almost like she never intended it to be said out loud, not where Jared can hear it.  
  
It’s the pot giving lectures to the kettle. Sophia and Jared – they’re people with flaws who are always more comfortable talking about their imperfections, because the good in them is fugitive, indistinct and fragile in a world where they don’t belong anywhere.  
  
They joke, and they laugh, and they ignore the lies in each other’s eyes.  
  
They try to fit in, to do right, and forget that it’s a world and a place that’s not theirs, and never will be. But Jared can’t deny the ability that is core of what makes him  _him_  – that makes all the difference. And he doesn’t know what it means and why it was given to him.  
  
What if?  
  
What if so many things. Bad and worse, because sometimes he doesn’t trust himself to be the same day after day and ten years in the future.  
  
But they live.  
  
Longer, better, healthier.  _Superior._  
  
Sometimes he wants to laugh at the irony.  
  
 “Honestly, I have friends. In my unit.”  
  
“Flakey, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.” Sophia doesn’t look at him, just steers him along the hall, towards an interrogation room that always seems too small.  
  
He knows. It’s not about having friends – it’s about letting anyone close enough to really know him. Or really for him  _not_  to know them – because it’s a constant tug of war to rein his power in and not see everything they aren’t saying.  
  
At least in his work, the whole point is to get in someone else’s mind. No ethical wrangling required.  
  
“You know you’re not alone anymore, right?” Sophia says as they reach the room with the number two plastered on a plaque on the wall. She touches him, sudden and unasked, and he closes his eyes, revels in the touch much as he did when he asked Sophia to do it back at the Institute – he wanted to feel nothing while he wanted to  _feel_  too much.  
  
For him, touch is pain, brief, torturous, and more agonizing in the aftermath. Touch removes any element of voluntary to his ability. He’s learned how to build walls for everything, except for that. Touch connects, transfers all someone’s thinking about.  
  
But Sophia’s touch has always been different. This is Sophia, and she’s a person, not shadow thoughts invading him. There are no thoughts racing towards the corners of Jared’s mind – just whispers.  
  
The harsh scrape of the door on the linoleum brings him back to reality, and he steps into the room. He’s ready to face this.  
  
A man is pacing, turns to look at Jared.  
  
Jared feels a wall, cold, blank, sharp, white – infinite – and strings that knot around him, binding him to the blankness and he tries to talk, to scream, to pull away from that excruciating grip – but nothing works, he can’t break free –  
  
The last thing he hears is Sophia’s footsteps. The last thing he sees is a pair of emerald green eyes, locked with his as the man goes rigid simultaneously with Jared.  
  
They fall.  
  
The last thing he feels is a hand on his, ethereal, unreal, and too far away.


	3. Part Two

_Long strokes from a paintbrush that’s too big – colors_   _of_   _red and rose, amethyst and off-white, and they’re liquid, burning hot, trickling down the walls into the royal blue of the floor, too hard, too bright. It’s a million years for Jared, a million thoughts._  
  
“Jared? Can you hear me? Come on, open your eyes.”  
  
Sophia. Worried. Fear that would translate into panic if not for all the training she has.  
  
 _Sophia, crimson, bloody – foam of the water that tickles the sand._  
  
 _She is tomorrow morning’s sunrise._  
  
 _Fire behind a mountain, hope in a pillow of clouds._  
  
 _Clear. Sharp._  
  
 _It’s the first step of the fall, the seconds that run backwards in which he doesn’t know that he does._  
  
Footsteps. More people. Static.  
  
Orders.  
  
Jared’s there, and he’s not present at all.  
  
 _Doors. Inky black on a canvas of muted white, doors that are just shapes and molds and gates made out of thoughts. Doors that lose their lines and their outline, lose the consistency of matter – motion that flows, ebbs, comforts –_  
  
 _Jared falls. Only he doesn’t, because the Nothing has shape, and he walks, he crawls, all at the same time._  
  
 _He’s in control, like he never was._  
  
Buzzing. Is that him? That’s too much of an effort, to think on the outside.  
  
He slips back, oddly peaceful and almost happy.  
  
 _Mirrors. All the Jareds. All the things he is. Cracked, tarnished. A sunless room, a child that will never go back outside. Fog, hazy and vaporous, swallows them all. It covers all the dreams in a blanket of indistinct, indefinite, and they float towards a small window coated in gray, anthracite, heavy and murky._  
  
 _Features of a man he remembers, pieces of a boy he often forgets._  
  
 _Glass stained with smiles and rust._  
  
 _Empty places. Discolored patches that taint the inevitability of it all. Of fate and nature, of the “I am.”_  
  
 _They’re new._  
  
 _They’re smeared in another color, one that he can’t name. It’s green but not the emerald that he’d seen in those eyes. Motionless. Why?_  
  
 _Things he can’t explain because he’s not sure he’s seeing them at all._  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Vaguely familiar voice.  
  
“Don’t give me that.”  
  
Sophia.  
  
“This one’s not waking up, either.”  
  
The first voice again. Far away. He won’t touch.  
  
Sophia looks down, and Jared, somewhere, from another world, and another time, realizes that he hasn’t closed his eyes at all.  
  
“Yeah, except I’m not sure they’re asleep at all,” Sophia says, and touches Jared on his hand, traces his mark.  
  
 _Sky blue. It bleeds onto a house made out of stripes of red and white, with edges carved in perfection. Roads slither away, flow like rivers of coal that chase away into the unknown._  
  
 _Birds scatter in his presence, crows reflect the bareness of all that’s around._  
  
 _There’s a feeling, a warmth that seeps into his skin, a meaning told in stories to a kid looking up from the fallen branch of a tree, in a forest of green and innocence and light._  
  
 _There’s a shadow, a shadow tacked with pins to a wall. It tries to escape. It tries to run._  
  
 _It splinters with a loud crack, sudden, somehow expected in the finality the lines shaped out, and the real crumbles into fine dust, beads of colors that wait patiently to crawl up on the canvas again._  
  
 _The air is punched out of Jared’s lungs._  
  
He breathes.  
  
Slow, long, deep – until he remembers, and then it’s a fight all over again.  
  
He fights to breathe, to be, to return to existing – and just when he thinks he has a grasp on the solid weight of Sophia’s arm, just when he looks back into her beautiful hazel eyes, tired and wide, it comes back for him again.  
  
The monster, the shadow that’s not dark at all.  
  
 _Cartoons. Smoke. Edges too rounded, colors too defined. Sketches._  
  
 _Whispers._  
  
 _Voices he can’t trust. All the same pitch, in the same deep sandpaper growl. Monsters. Familiar._  
  
 _“No.”_  
  
 _That’s not his. That’s foreign. That’s not real._  
  
 _“It is.” A pause. A drumbeat, and an eternity. “Take my hand.”_  
  
 _His mind seeks solace and relief. The voice is not._  
  
 _He reaches out._  
  
“Come on, Jared, please talk to me.”  
  
 “Agent?”  
  
He knows that voice. He doesn’t like hearing it so small and unsure.  
  
“Jared?”  
  
He sees a face, a woman in a doctor’s coat. He knows her. And she understands it’s not his body that hurts, but his mind.  
  
 _He has questions._  
  
 _He doesn’t ask._  
  
 _The Other answers all the same, because he understands Jared better than he himself does._  
  
 _“I’m your dream.”_  
  
 _A step on a bridge. Water, raindrops on the rail, and wet against the mark on his palm._  
  
 _“I’m the universe. I’m your light. I’m the shipwreck in love with the sky.”_  
  
 _The shadow is a man. The green is trees and reality is captive to a custodian of moments and time. The feeling is sunlight caught in a lamp._  
  
 _“I’m your other part.”_  
  
The floor is cold and hard.  
  
Jared doesn’t understand. Feeling in his body comes back.  
  
He tries to talk.  
  
But he hears, faint and uneven, shallow breaths coming from the other side of the room.  
  
 _The room gets smaller. The man gets closer, and that’s when Jared sees – the hand, outstretched, limp. The mark on his palm reflects Jared’s._  
  
 _“You believe me now?”_  
  
 _It rains beads of starlight. They’re alone in a sea of navy blue, outlines made in chalk, crisp and loud._  
  
 _Jared does. He doesn’t really know why. Except nothing feels more right._  
  
 _A train lost in the mountain whistles, and the moon tiptoes on the canvas, smiles down._  
  
 _He moves for what seems like the first time. Slow, unsure, awkward and shaky._  
  
 _His fingers brush warmth, skin dusted in freckles and Jared traces the unmistakable lines of a smile that’s too wide. Jared feels the touch on his wrist, real even in the world of his mind._  
  
 _He shudders, vibrates in time with the heartbeats he feels._  
  
 _“I’m here. Now. Since always.” Calloused fingers trace over his palm, and there’s pain, stinging, sharp – just for a second, not enough._  
  
 _They’re bound._  
  
 _“Jared.” He looks up in eyes he’ll never forget again. “Find me.”_  
  
Jared wakes up. It’s an instant where he feels the heavy burden of all he’s lost – then endless seconds after which give him hope.  
  
There’s a crowd. Three, four people standing and the second body lying on the floor fill the room to capacity.  
  
The other body moves, and it takes a moment, a second too long for Jared to recognize the man from his dreams without the rays of the sun and the moon.  
  
He’s real, he’s  _here, he’s now._  
  
He opens his eyes.  
  
Jared sees. Himself, the Other, the beginning of the road towards the future etched in stone, towards the story that finds meaning in him, the child who always ran towards his dream at sundown.  
  
The man blinks.  
  
Sophia is saying something.  
  
He can’t hear. He can’t hear anything. Not thoughts. Not the past, not the future, and nothing in between. Empty.  
  
His own thoughts, only his.  
  
“Jared?”  
  
And maybe it’s stupid, but all he wants to do is cry, cry until he exhausts himself enough to sleep. It’s a relief so strong, he doesn’t even know what to do, how to speak, how to  _live_  with it.  
  
“Come on, Jared, talk to me.”  
  
She’s touching his cheek. And her touch – her touch is welcome because it doesn’t hurt him.  
  
Jared looks at Sophia, and she must read his eyes, because teardrops that fall unnoticed on her gaunt cheek.  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
Too bad he doesn’t know what  _fine_  means, and hasn’t for a long time.  
  


 

~

  
  
“Jesus fucking Christ, Padalecki. You fucking scared me. You’re going to the hospital to get checked out.”  
  
“Soph – “  
  
She shakes her head. The doctor on her other side – now Jared sees it’s Danneel Harris, doctor and friend, in that order, and makes him wonder exactly how much time has he been out – nods.  
  
“No. Nope. Don’t want to hear anything.” Sophia breathes, exhales slowly. “Maybe after my heart stops trying to escape my ribcage. Maybe then you’re forgiven.”  
  
Jared feels guilty. The guilt of someone who always wanted to share happiness and keep pain to himself, who wished for someone to love him without the hurt that always came with it. When he was a child and he was sick, he hated people tending to him. Not because he didn’t want the attention, not because it didn’t feel good to be cared for, but because a small part of him was comforted by the worry lines on his parent’s features.  
  
That they still loved him.  
  
And, at the same time, that love made him desperate because of the suffering he came to read into it.  
  
“I’m fine,” he repeats.  
  
Jared says it with a conviction he’s never felt before, with a certainty that doesn’t reside in the improbable perpetuity of the feeling, but in the belief that now he knows how to be.  
  
Dr. Harris arches an eyebrow. Unsurprisingly, Sophia’s not convinced.  
  
“Dude.”  
  
Jared has a theory. Jared thinks Sophia has her own room of mirrors, and when she’s with him, the red-headed, one part happy-surfer-chic, one part head-banging-rocker-masochist, both parts cursing-like-a-sailor-Sophia gets dusted off the shelves a bit.  
  
She’s always been a contradiction in the simplest way possible – Jared understood her, even when the outside was breaking in.  
  
The doctor interrupts. “So. What exactly was that, Agent Padalecki? Just so we’re clear. So Sophia knows what to tell her boss when he asks why people in the interrogation room are dropping like flies.”  
  
Jared shrugs.  
  
Sophia looks at him incredulously.  
  
“Fuck me,” she sighs. He can’t think of anything to say.  
  
“Come on, Flakey.” She steadies Jared as he rises from the floor. “You’re going to the hospital with Dr. Harris. Just in case.”  
  
Jared’s head spins towards her abruptly. “What about him?”  
  
She shrugs noncommittally. “That’s not up to either of us.”  
  
Sophia looks at Danneel. She’s standing by the other man, who’s shifted to a chair, his back to Jared. He’s shaking his head.  
  
“I still have a couple of hours to go on my shift. Had to get Danneel to deal with your ass after all this.”  
  
Jared wants to protest. He really does. But he’s tired, in a pleasant way that’s compliments the illusion that he actually accomplished something.  
  
All that comes out is, “My ass really doesn’t need dealing with.”  
  
Which, as always, is an excessively smart-ass reply, a fact proven by Sophia’s worried, confused, incredulous, and really fucking freaked expression.  
  
But she must be worn out, because it’s not the standard answer masquerading as a joke that she responds with. This is honest – at least by Sophia’s definition of the word – like she’s too tired to follow the script.  
  
“Well, I say it does. What happened is anything but normal. And because, as much as it pains me to admit it, you’ve managed to crawl under someone else’s skin successfully when they were not looking. We care about you, idiot.”  
  
 Jared lets Sophia’s words float into the air, and then the silence replaces it, peaceful and soothing.  
  
He drifts, for seconds and lifetimes. He thinks. He wonders about  _him_.  
  
The Other. The man who suddenly changed everything.  
  
Or maybe just him.  _22nd Oak Street, Apartment 4B_ flashes in his head as an ambulance attendant arrives to take Jared out of the room.

 


	4. Part Three

The images blur, suspended in time that exists only in Jared’s mind. The road unfolds before him, crowded, desperate, full of noise.  
  
He’d been given the okay – and a stern look - by Dr. Harris, so he’d called Tom, his teammate on the Major Crimes Prevention Unit, to take him home.  
  
Tom asked him if he needed to be carried bridal style to the limousine.  
  
Translation – no, he doesn’t want to be dragged by his feet to the dirty Jeep the Major Crimes unit keeps as a poor joke of an official vehicle.  
  
It’s a piece of normal he doesn’t understand anymore.  
  
 “And you’re actually thinking of searching for him,” Tom says, and Jared comes back, returns to being the broken piece of reality he feels like he is.  
  
He shrugs. He didn’t expect that his story would make much sense to either Tom or Adrianne, his unit partners. “Is that such a bad thing?”  
  
“I don’t know, man. We usually have to drag you kicking and screaming to meet new people.”  
  
“This is –“, Jared replies, but stops, because there’s no words adequate enough to describe what he felt, what the last hours have been for him. “This is different.”  
  
Tom and Adrianne snort in unison. Sometimes it’s painfully obvious why they’re husband and wife.  
  
“No shit, Captain,” Adrianne helpfully supplies, and Jared almost resists the urge to roll his eyes.  
  
“Don’t get us wrong, we’re happy for you, becoming a social butterfly and all –“  
  
And see, that’s why Jared isn’t particularly keen on these car rides. He’s assigned to the backseat of the car, and the inevitable lectures that Jared’s less than ideal life choices elicit from Tom and Adrianne do nothing but add to the feeling he’s a little kid in his parents’ car.  
  
“– but we’re not sure that a convict is the best place to start,” she finishes, all too smug.  
  
Jared huffs, because, why not. If he’s treated like a kid, he might act like one.  
  
“He’s not a convict.”  
  
Tom turns to look at him, hand grabbing the dashboard, which, Jared notices absently, begins to turn into a dark forest green. “And you know this how?”  
  
Jared thinks for a moment, then goes for the most eloquent answer he can muster up. “I just know.”  
  
“Well. So glad we clarified that.”  
  
“I don’t really know how to explain it, Adrianne,” he starts, hoping he’ll find what he wants to say along the way. “I’ve never felt anything like that. So…good. So vivid. So –“  
  
“Is this a sex dream?” Tom interrupts, and Jared flinches from the anticipated thump even though he knows Adrianne’s weirdly strict rule of keeping both hands on the wheel will protect him. Apparently growing extra limbs on demand creates a phobia of crashing the car while driving.  
  
“It’s  _something_. I wish I could describe it, man. I  _felt_  it, with all of me, everything in me just – seemed attuned to him. I’m going to find him.”  
  
Jared lets the words falter, and he notices a quick look exchanged between Tom and his wife.  
  
“Jared,” Tom begins, cautiously, choosing his words carefully, in a way that Tom never does, “it might be a trap.”  
  
Jared shrugs.  
  
“Maybe. It can also be like a dozen things we’ve faced in the past. Superior whose power is stronger than mine. Normal who is just really good at messing with my head. Or a new one. What does it matter?”  
  
A few beats, where the silence feels oppressing, where Jared knows how his words could shape themselves in another meaning, one that he hasn’t thought about in a long time.  
  
Adrianne breaks the silence, a tone that manages to be revolted and a whisper all at the same time.  
  
“How can you say that?”  
  
“Well, the way I see it, it’s a choice that I have to make right now. I can be afraid, or maybe is I should forget it ever happened. I guarantee you, it won’t be hard. I’ve forgotten so many things in my life.”  
  
 _Dates, cries, birthdays, screams, worries._  
  
“Hey – “  
  
“No. It’s not – I’m not trying to say anything except that I’m not letting fear be the thing that runs my life.”  
  
There’s silence for a few moments, then Tom agrees, with his deep voice of a bass, “Solid.”  
  
Jared snorts.  
  
“Thank you for your approval, Mom, Dad.”  
  
“You’re welcome, son,” Adrianne says in a sweet tone, so straight-faced, that Jared considers his sanity for a moment, then decides it’s already long gone.  
  
“So. Where do we find this guy?” Tom asks.  
  
Jared wonders if it’s only Superiors who have friends that support them in questionable decisions.  Maybe just his friends.  
  
  
  


~

  
It takes a few days to actually get to the address. Jared’s a bit rumpled, a bit rough around the edges – yesterday’s fight with a Superior who can throw you around like you weigh nothing will do that – but he wants to do this, he’s waited long enough.  
  
Jared wanted to see if everything he had felt would fade, would slip into the ideality the past usually cloaks itself in. It doesn’t. The Other’s touch seems etched into his skin, into the Mark on his hand, and the voice, the words, the images – things that would have no meaning in the real world, but which are a tangible presence in Jared’s head – remain a stark memory.  
  
Every time he thinks about the stranger there is residual warmth invading his body, and Jared has no idea what it all means, why it’s happening to him, why now. He doesn’t want to chase a manufactured happiness, an imagined ideal that is too bright for it not to be artificial – he wants to understand, to allow the possibility of truth somewhere between the bright light of the stars.  
  
Jared breaths, deep, slow, and knocks.  
  
  


~

  
The man is beautiful.  
  
That’s the only word Jared can find. He doesn’t understand – again, because it’s a trademark of Jared’s life – but what should be normal, mundane, predictable, two people meeting in a doorway, is –  
  
 _It’s the feeling of a summer morning, sunlit and bright._  
  
 _It’s the touch of a hazy sundown trickling into a midnight blue sea, blankets of coral clouds dissolving into the hazy quietude of the night._  
  
 _It’s the energy of climbing a mountain, and reaching the top, the insignificance of man facing titans of rock, the raw joy of returning to simpler things._  
  
 _It’s the thought of fireflies in a crowded city street, light and dark, and all becoming nothing except for the touch of someone’s hand on his._  
  
 _It’s the nostalgia of autumn and the carpet of leaves crunching under boots, and it’s the beauty of flowers emerging through snow in the spring. The shine of snow and the coldness of it, little snowflakes on his fingertips._  
  
 _It’s everything._  
  
 _It’s a lifetime, condensed in one feeling._  
  
The Other smiles, and Jared enters, dazed, confused, reaching uselessly for something that makes sense again, something that doesn’t rearrange everything he believes in.  
  
  
  


~

  
  
“Hi,” is the brilliant line Jared opens with.  
  
But the man is smiling. Jared falters, grasps for ordinary, and follows into the kitchen where a large pot simmers on the stove.  
  
“You’re cooking.”  
  
The Other arches an eyebrow. “What did you think I would be doing?”  
  
Jared lets himself fall into a kitchen chair. “I don’t know. Floating into the abyss?”  
  
The man chokes on the piece of cooked potato he’s sampling. He laughs, deep, resonating.  
  
“Floating into the –“ he’s still laughing when he sees Jared’s unimpressed stare. ”Dude.”  
  
“I quote:  _I am your light –“_  
  
The man stops, and his wide grin shrinks into a careful smile, his eyes brighter, greener for it. He rubs the back of his neck with his hand, in a gesture that Jared finds incredibly endearing.  
  
“Oh yeah. That.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
A delay while the man places a tray in the oven, then slides the kitchen gloves off his hands and leans across the table.  
  
He’s searching for something in Jared’s eyes.  
  
“So. What do you want to know, Jared?”  
  
It hits him.  
  
“We can start with how the hell you know my name.”  
  
The Other blinks, surprised.  
  
“I know everything about you,” he says, and just when Jared’s on the verge of protesting, asking  _what the fuck_ , he adds, “and I know nothing.”  
  
Yes. Very elucidating. Mystery solved.  
  
Jared sighs.  
  
“That’s very helpful, thanks.”  
  
“You want answers. But nobody said they were going to be the ones you want.”  
  
“I want to understand what the hell happened the other day. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”  
  
The man studies him for the moment.  
  
“You don’t?” he asks.  
  
That makes Jared pause.  
  
Maybe. What right does Jared have to barge in, and just demand? But the man asked. This is not a shapeless shadow like so many others in his mind. This is real, and yet, beyond anything in Jared’s experience.  
  
“I’m thinking you can ask my name, then I’ll offer you a glass of wine.”  
  
Jared raises his gaze, meets the other’s eyes. Oh. Right.  
  
Awkward silence. Now he doesn’t know what to say.  
  
The man sighs, and Jared detects a fondness that he hasn’t earned.  
  
“I’m Jensen.”  
  
 _Jensen._  
  
Why does that sound …right?  
  
Like it was already etched in his mind.  
  
Well, all he can say to this new revelation is, fuck his life. He would also really like that glass of wine now.  
  
As soon as he thinks that, one appears in front of him. Jared looks at it suspiciously. “So. You can read my mind.”  
  
Jensen is taken aback.  
  
“What? No.”  
  
He watches Jared for a few long seconds, and Jared’s sure he doesn’t have the friendliest of looks in his eyes. Despite the lovey fluffy residual feelings Jared has from his two-minute original encounter, the fact remains – Jensen’s a stranger, and possibly a dangerous one. Dangerous to Jared because nobody has ever able to go that far in Jared’s mind.  
  
“You know nothing about this, huh?”  
  
Jared recoils.  
  
“Know what?”  
  
“Mates. Bonding.”  
  
Jared starts to hear a suspicious ringing in his ears.  
  
“Huh,” he answers, eloquently, because there’s not much he can find to say about  _that_.  
  
Jensen chuckles, unnervingly calm as he steps back, leans casually on the counter, and stops Jared’s thoughts in their track.  
  
The long line of Jensen’s legs in faded jeans, the simple, white V-neck t-shirt that bunches up over the lean muscles where he crosses his arms, Jesus Christ, that smirk on his mouth – Jared’s own mouth is suddenly dry.  
  
“I can’t read your mind, Jared. But you are a Telepath.”  
  
Jared tries to focus again.  
  
“So what?”  
  
“Well. Mates share their abilities, in a way.”  
  
 “So we’re  _mates_?” he asks, cautiously, with the full awareness that it’s going to take more than a one word answer to actually be convinced of that.  
  
Jensen smiles indulgently.  
“You’re kind of slow,” he says, and Jared might not be the most socially proficient guy, but he’d be stupid not to hear the playful tone in it. “How are you a cop?”  
  
“Agent,” Jared contributes out of reflex.  
  
Jensen nods. “I know.” He grins. “Kind of sexy, actually.”  
  
Jared’s convinced the intended effect was for him to sputter for a few agonizing moments, trying to find a right answer to that.  
  
He finds absolutely none and decides to take a sip of wine. Jensen waits him out.  
  
“So,” Jared clears his throat in a decidedly non-awkward manner, and picks the second mystery that comes to mind, since he isn’t ready to tackle ‘mates’ yet. “About that sharing abilities thing.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Some details would be helpful,” he spells out. “Just, so, you know, we can avoid another minor freak out.”  
  
Jensen’s lips twitch. “Minor?”  
  
Jared fixes him with his gaze.  
  
“I didn’t think this would be so enjoyable,” Jensen comments, smug grin still plastered on his face. He motions Jared toward a light grey couch situated in the center of the living room.  
  
They sit down, and contrary to all that should be a sensible reaction, Jared is weirdly relaxed.  
  
Jensen leaves a bit of space between them and waits for Jared to settle down, to gain his full attention again.  
  
“It’s simple, really. Since you’re able to read people, their emotions, their minds – it’s easy for me to feel, to understand yours.”  
  
“Your definition of simple kind of blows my mind.”  
  
“It is,” he insists, “once you get used to it.”  
  
Jared laughs, a little too sudden, a little too loud.  
  
“You will,” Jensen assures him, and Jared notices the aborted movement of Jensen’s hand sliding towards his.  
  
Jared suggests what he knows won’t be possible.  
  
“What if I don’t want to?”  
  
Jensen studies him calmly. “Is that what you really want?”  
  
There’s a pause, and Jared lets out a breath, admits, “No. But it does bother me that I don’t have a choice in it.”  
  
“You do have a choice.”  
  
Jared’s confused.  
  
“Have you ever read Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt?”  
  
Jared shakes his head.  
  
“He says that people are first shaped by their parents, by things and people surrounding them as children, and then they shape themselves by choices they make. We all have a set of features, of abilities, of flaws and disadvantages – and that’s difficult to change, but the way in which you view them and use them to shape your path into the world – that’s the real choice we have.”  
  
“And you agree with him.”  
  
“I think we wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t the Jared you are. If that makes any kind of sense.”  
  
Jared tilts his head. Strangely, it does.  
  
“Chicken and the egg,” Jared concludes, because he sort of understands what,  _how_  this is.  
  
Jensen smiles. “Something like that, yeah.”  
  
“Very intriguing issue of freedom of will aside,” Jared muses, “what am I getting out of this?”  
  
He hopes Jensen hears the joke in it.  
  
“You’ll see,” he whispers, and Jared would object to this power shift if not for the fact that it actually sounds like a promise.  
  
Jensen stares at him a moment longer, then leaves the couch to check on whatever he’s cooking. Which smells amazing.  
  
God fucking damn it.  
  
This is difficult enough without Jensen embodying Jared’s perfect man in one very  _perfect_  body.  
  
Huh. Well, maybe he’s a bit subjective. A  _lot_  subjective?  
  
Still to be determined. Jared’s not at all clear on this  _mates_  thing.  
  
“Why can’t I see?”  
  
 “I’m sorry?”  
  
“When I use my abilities, I  _see_. You know the way they train you to remember things when you’re a kid?” Jared tries to explain, but as many times he’s done it, he’s not sure he’s manages to put it into something coherent. “Teachers would tell us to imagine things, castles with rooms, boxes, treasure chests, that kind of thing.”  
  
Jensen nods, and Jared continues, a bit unsure, but determined to get to the point.  
  
“Well, that’s what I see when I use my abilities. Each person has a different…” he searches for a word, “structure in their mind. Little kids usually have just a foundation, whatever that is – with age, there comes complexity.”  
  
“So an adult would have, like, a skyscraper,” Jensen contributes to the analogy.  
  
Jared chuckles. “Yeah. Well, not exactly, you know, it’s never a definite thing, and it’s always unfinished around the edges.”  
  
Jensen’s lips purse into a thin line, pull at the corners. “It’s just a feeling for me – like anticipating things, if we’re talking about thoughts. And emotions…I _know_  what you feel, but it’s also something that’s distinctly separate from me.”  
  
Jared thinks about it. Not a bad deal, on the whole of things.  
  
“Right. Well. That’s…a bit different. I have to immerse myself in whatever –  _whoever_  – I’m trying to read.”  
  
Jensen comes back to the couch, and Jared’s fascinated by how the dim light reflects in Jensen’s eyes.  
  
“That sounds exhausting.”  
  
Jared laughs bitterly. “It is. It’s just – “  
  
 He stops, doesn’t know if they’ve reached a point where he can say such a thing. Something that he doesn’t want to admit to himself, hates that it makes him so weak.  
  
“Sometimes I have trouble figuring it all out. Who I am. What’s left of me and what are bits forgotten from other people.”  
  
This time, Jensen touches him.  
  
It doesn’t hurt. There are no thoughts invading his mind involuntarily. It’s just touch, touch that he’s craved so desperately. He leans into it instinctively.  
  
It’s just a hand on his knee, and it shouldn’t be appropriate after less than an hour of talking, but it bears the feel of familiarity, a rightness that seems to come with Jensen and everything related to him.  
  
“See, that. That’s another thing,” he mutters, eyes glued to the hand on his jeans, enveloped in the warmth he feels. “I can’t stand for people to touch me. It’s too much.”  
  
“I think you know who you are, Jared, you’re just afraid to trust in it.”  
  
It’s said softly, like Jensen hopes it’s not too much, too sudden, and Jared resists the urge to laugh hysterically. He’s just told a virtual stranger one of his deepest, darkest fears.  _Too much_  doesn’t even begin to cover it.  
  
“I still don’t get how it’s possible to know me better than anyone I’ve ever spent time with.”  
  
Jensen winks. “I’ll tell you the story.”  
  
“The story? There’s a story?”  
  
“There always is a story, isn’t that what you were just saying, Agent Padalecki?”  
  
Jared concedes. “And when will I be honored with this fascinating tale, if I’m not too forward in asking?”  
  
Jensen eyes him heatedly. Right. Jared gets the slightest inkling of what might get Jensen going between the sheets.  
  
“I think it’s a question of earning it.”  
  
“And when will I have the chance to do that?” he says, in a tone that’s half-serious, half mocking, because this can’t be his life right now.  
  
“Let’s start, oh, say, day after tomorrow. There’s a bakery down the street.”  
  
Jared’s head is sort of spinning. Jensen has to be the most confusing individual on this planet, intentionally, and still, Jared is captivated by him.  
  
This is either going to end mind-blowingly well, or fail horribly, with the loss of limbs, life, or sanity.  
  
“If I say no?” he challenges.  
  
“Free to do so,” Jensen replies too calmly.  
  
“I’m saying yes, on one condition.”  
  
Jensen breaks into a grin. “Wouldn’t expect anything else.”  
  
“Tell me why my mind doesn’t see when I’m with you. Why I don’t see  _you_.”  
  
Jensen smiles ruefully, leans back into the back of the couch, and it’s the first time his eyes lose the glint of happiness all evening.  
  
“There are fail-safes built in, Jared. Too much power is an issue when there’s love involved.”  
  
 _Love_.  
  
Jared inhales sharply. He’s never dared the word, has always considered it out of the question, for him more than anybody – but somehow, right now, in this moment, anything seems possible.  
  
After maybe a century.  
  
Fuck. He doesn’t know. He struggles to focus on what Jensen’s saying.  
  
“There’s not always a straight road. And it’s never easy. The man who loves has something that can be held against him.”  
  
“Well, that’s an optimistic perspective.”  
  
Jensen shakes his head. “I don’t mean it like a bad thing. It takes strength to love and it takes courage to be loved, is what I’m saying, or trying to, at least.”  
  
“I assume that is another quote, oh wise one.”  
  
Jared finds out Jensen’s not above hitting him – albeit lightly – despite all of the fifty minutes they’ve known each other.  
  
 “It is. Sometimes my own words don’t serve me as well as I want.”  
  
Jared quirks an eyebrow. “So this understanding thing doesn’t go both ways.”  
  
“It will.” A pause, just a few beats. “With time.”  
  
Jared stares at him, gets lost into the freckles on Jensen’s nose and cheek. “How are you so sure about this?”  
  
Jensen laughs without any humor in it.  
  
“I’m not sure about anything, Jared. But I have to be.”  
  
Jensen stands in response to the barely-heard ding of the oven timer, leaving Jared feeling like they’ve both lost and they’ve both gained something from this conversation.  
  
“So, you hungry?” Jensen asks, like having Jared over for dinner was totally planned for.  
  
And, for some bizarre reason, when Jared says yes, it feels like it was.


	5. Part Four

_Crackling._  
  
 _Fire, maybe. Glass, breaking. Dust of reality, slipping between her fingers._  
  
 _Echoes, slowed down. Distant._  
  
 _Layers and layers, and the writing on the wall._  
  
 _Wires. Shaky hands. Metal._  
  
 _Bomb._  
  
Jared comes back abruptly, with the breath punched out of his lungs.  
  
The image, the clock.  _Tick. Tock_  –  
  
Jared runs.  
  
He doesn’t have time.  
  
Not to shout, not to tell anyone what he’s doing, why he’s running for life. The waiting lounge of the train station is too large, too crowded. There are too many variables to be taken into account –  
  
He spots the woman, easy to pick out of a crowd after he’s become familiar with her mind.  
  
She’s not running. She smiles at him, strong, confident in her plan.  
  
She turns her back on Jared, but the motion is too fluid, too fast – there’s nothing but air where a second before there was a young woman with dark brown hair and unnaturally blue eyes.  
  
Jared stops, closes his eyes.  
  
He forgets all about his surroundings. He forgets about Tom, who’s still chasing the other two bad guys. He forgets about Adrianne, who’s lying unconscious near the wall. Aldis is just a faint presence at the back of his head, and what that means, he doesn’t even want to think about.  
  
He focuses on the image of scaffolds, stacked on top of each other like shelves, different things littered all over them.  
  
 _A Christmas card. Bottles strung together with rope, empty, all too tempting._  
  
 _Black and red trickling down, soaking everything in viscous ink._  
  
 _Crackling. Again. Dust. She’s covered in it._  
  
 _Bodies. Bodies stacked on top of each other at the foundation of it all, pieces of stained glass frozen in the Nothing._  
  
Jared opens his eyes, focuses on a seemingly empty patch on the brown wall. He runs.  
  
He is fast enough.  
  
She doesn’t realize it – doesn’t quite get what Jared was capable of. She materializes in his hands, solid, interrupted, agitated.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Jared turns her around with a little more force than necessary. Her thoughts are still lingering inside his head as he presses her into the cold stone wall.  
  
“You’re going to tell me how to disarm that bomb.” He fastens the cuffs, and he knows he’s hurting her, but right now, he doesn’t care,  _can’t_ care. “Now.”  
  
“You don’t understand – the Traveler –“ she mumbles, because she thinks she has a chance.  
  
“I don’t care. Bomb. I’m defusing it. Tell me how. Right the fuck now.”  
  
She says red.  
  
And Jared hesitates – a few seconds too long for all the panicked voices in his head – wonders if, for all he’s been in her head, she could be lying to him.  
  
She wasn’t planning on getting out alive.  
  
Jared picks blue.  
  
The world goes black.  
  


~

  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“Right there with you, my man,” Tom groans from the chair next to him.  
  
Jared hates hospitals. Hospitals means he’s weak. That he doesn’t have control over what’s happening.  
  
He sneaks a glance at Tom, who’s covered in blood, and Jared doesn’t know if it’s soothing or worrying that he can tell it’s not Tom’s.  
  
They’re waiting for word on Aldis and Adrianne.  
  
Adrianne has only minor injuries, a concussion and a broken arm, which, for a Superior, means aspirin and a nap.  
  
Aldis, though – he’s not waking up. Doctors have no clue why. Out of the four criminals they were chasing, Aldis took down one – but it was mutual destruction, because as soon as the guy went down, Aldis collapsed. It could be a repeat of what happened to Jared – except Aldis isn’t coming around.  
  
“What the fuck happened, Jared? We spent the morning drinking coffee and talking about the Lakers and now we have two dead guys, a teammate in a coma and no clue what this whole clusterfuck is about.”  
  
Jared shrugs. Tom’s defenses are down with Adrianne out of commission, and Jared can hear too much of what Tom’s thinking right now.  
  
Which is a blistering string of curses, but still. Tom’s right. Lately, too many of their days are like this – chasing new Superiors who are stronger, faster, more intent on death and destruction. A year ago, a typical day meant perusing cold case files, maybe catching a low-profile thief using laser eyes to rob a jewelry store. The most exciting thing was getting called in to help with a truly  _major_  crime by the normal FBI.  
  
But that didn’t happen often. Normals and Superiors rarely mixed professionally or voluntarily.  
  
Jared’s always unsettled, anxious after an encounter where he has to force himself into another mind.  
  
He has to rebuild his walls, clawing at what is in him, making certain that everything in his mind is only his.  
  
 “The girl. Jesus fucking Christ. Her mind – “  
  
Tom raises his head from his hands, surprised. Jared doesn’t talk about what he experiences on a case. Not usually.  
  
But the residual impressions from the bomber are haunting him.  
  
“People were dying all around her. Mass executions, I think. I…I don’t know. It looked strange. It looked – faded.” Jared stops to search for the right way to explain it. ”Old? But not old. Just – layered. But how the fuck is that possible? She built herself on death. It’s all anger and hate, everything. She can’t see beyond any of that.”  
  
Tom watches him carefully.  
  
“Jared – “  
  
“Tom, I’m okay,” he reassures himself as well as Tom. His own blackout was caused by a well-timed foot to his head by the girl, who thought she’s take her last chance after Jared had disarmed the bomb. “I really am. I’m actually going to see her later – “  
  
Tom turns to him abruptly. “You’re  _what_?”  
  
“Going to holding to see the girl we arrested,” Jared replies with as much calm as he can muster.  
  
“Why the fuck would you do that?”  
  
“Because someone has to figure out what the fuck is happening, and you’re staying right here, with your wife.”  
  
He feels the waves of worry coming from his friend.  
  
“Tom – I really am okay now. It helps that I’ve told you,” Jared adds, because he can see Tom’s still a little worried, “because now I don’t have to be the only one who loses sleep trying to figure out what it all means.”  
  
Tom glares. “Asshole.”  
  
Jared has  _a lot_  of replies to that, but he’s stopped by the doctor coming to update them on their teammates.  
  
“Agents Welling, Padalecki.”  
  
“Dr. Harris, ” they greet her unnecessarily.  
  
 As fellow Superiors, they know each other all too well.  
  
She looks – unsettled. Her beautiful features are marked by exhaustion, dark circles under her eyes, pale cheeks, restless hands.  
  
“Agent Hodge is still unconscious. He’s stable, and has no visible injuries. From a medical standpoint, he’s completely healthy.”  
  
“Other for the fact that he’s doing his best impression of Sleeping Beauty,” Tom mutters.  
  
“Tom, not now,” Jared chides, and then turns to Danneel again. “Any idea why? Or if it’s like what happened to me?” He wouldn’t especially wish the upheaval from his first encounter with Jensen on anyone, much less a friend, but Jared  _had_  recovered.  
  
She sighs, takes the cap off her head. “Best I can guess, the Super he took down had an attachment ability – being able to attach himself to another Super and control their power. And with Aldis being an Amplifier – I think it was just bad timing. They…connected, and when Aldis tried to reduce his power, he took himself down, too.”  
  
An Amplifier wasn’t an exactly the right nickname for what Aldis was. He could amplify  _or_  reduce the power of other Superiors, but he had to be in physical contact. Jared guesses that an  _attachment_  ability would require touch as well.  
  
“ _Is_ he going to wake up?” Tom asks, and Jared feels the surge of anxiety for Aldis.  
  
“My guess is that as soon as his evil counterpart either wakes up or kicks the bucket, yeah.”  
  
Danneel rarely slips like that. Familiar. Like it was just them, friends talking about an accident, and there aren’t any official titles in the way.  
  
“Anyway. Adrianne is resting. Go be with her, Tom. There’s nothing more to be done for Aldis right now.”  
  
Tom goes without further prompting – Jared could tell, even without all the residual thoughts, how much he needs to see for himself that his wife is all right.  
  
Jared stops Danneel from leaving by reaching for her arm.  
  
And finds he’s still keyed with adrenaline so his grip is too forceful. A feeling of shame courses through him and he retracts his hand.  
  
“I’m…I’m sorry.”  
  
Danneel looks at him with confusion.  
  
“I just wanted to ask if  _you_  were okay.”  
  
Danneel laughs, but it sounds like glass breaking and she looks ready to cry.  
  
“I’m not okay, Jay,” she whispers, like she is afraid to verbalize a failure. “I’m definitely not okay.” Her voice breaks with the admission. “ I’ve have exactly two hours of sleep this week, I haven’t showered since Monday, I have no idea when I last ate anything, but because I’m this supposedly superior genetic being, none of that is a good enough reason for me to ask for help in the Superior ward.”  
  
Jared sees red.  
  
Danneel is one of the few doctors who specializes in Superior medicine in the country. There aren’t many of them – because, unsurprisingly, anything to do with Superiors seems contaminated, untouchable. Danneel’s stuck with every superior-related emergency that comes in, and getting no sympathy for it – superiors are held to a higher standard, and there’s so much less tolerance for anything less than exceptional performance from them. The hospital would be happy for an excuse to fire her.  
  
“I’m going to be okay, Jay, don’t worry,” she says when Jared stays silent. She’s come to know him well over the last few years – they were classmates at college but they never interacted much until Jared took up his crime-fighting career and landed in the hospital more times a month than he’d like to admit.  
  
“I just need a good night’s sleep, and someone to draw me a hot bath. With bubbles, vodka, and chocolate on the side,” she declares, and Jared can feel the sincerity. He settles down.  
  
He doesn’t know what good it would have done to yell and fight with every bigoted, prejudiced son of a bitch that was giving Danneel a hard time, but that had been his immediate impulse, and, worryingly, he can’t figure out if it was him or the bomb-girl talking.  
  
“I can promise chocolate and vodka if you come by when you get off,” Jared finally says, because he wants to do  _something_.  
  
Danneel seems to brighten at that. “You’re on, Padalecki.”  
  
She takes a few steps to leave, then turns around, adds with a mischievous grin, “You can tell me all about green eyes and freckles.”  
  
Jared groans.  
  
Well. Maybe he’ll ask Danneel to help him figure out what he should wear for the meeting (definitely not-date) he is having with Jensen tomorrow.  
  
Then he remembers that Danneel’s just as fashion illiterate as he is.  
  
Huh. He’s getting worse at lying to himself, it seems.  
  
  


~

  
  
When Jared enters the bakery, with the sound of wind chimes clinking in his head, Jensen –  _beautiful, sexy, smiling_  Jensen – is already there. He’s at a table in the corner, a dark figure against the background of the creamy blush of the wall.  
  
He’s wearing a navy t-shirt and black jeans, that even from the peek of them as Jared approaches  the table, seem entirely too form-fitted for Jared’s hormones to stay within normal range.  
  
Jared thinks about what he’s wearing – jeans that need a belt on them just to stay on his hips, a rumpled shell-grey buttondown that has seen better days – well. At least he’s consistent. It wasn’t like his first impression would have given Jensen the idea that he’s a good dresser.  
  
“Jared. You came.”  
  
Jensen beams at him, and Jared floats the rest of the way to the table.  
  
Well, shit.  
  
Apparently, this is going to go exactly like the other night did. Specifically with Jared making googly eyes at Jensen and feeling like he’s in another universe.  
  
He clears his throat, tries to speak normally.  
  
“Of course I did.”  
  
Jensen’s smile hides more than his words, and Jared wants to know them all. He takes a seat, watches Jensen’s nimble fingers smoothly tapping a drum rhythm on the tablecloth.  
  
“So, what do you want to eat?”  
  
“A steak,” Jared replies without thinking.  
  
But Jensen only laughs, a deep rumble that resonates within the small space of the bakery.  
  
“Right. I’m thinking red velvet cupcakes.”  
  
“Red velvet cupca –  _fine_. Okay. Whatever you think.”  
  
Switching focus to his mission to hunt down cupcakes and bring them as his offering, Jensen gets up.  
  
Jared watches him go – because reasons, and ass, and  _those jeans_  – then finds himself hoping that Jensen’s magical power is to make cupcakes not taste like a truckload of sugar mixed with fake flavor.  
  
He also thinks he could be slightly less bitchy, because mates and all, but everyone has a limit, and Jensen’s going to hit his if Jared keeps up with this snarky attitude.  
  
Jensen returns, and places a meticulously designed cupcake in front of Jared.  
  
The cupcake has a smiley face.  
  
“Funny,” Jared says.  
  
“Are you not cheered up?” Jensen asks as he sits back down sporting a mischievous grin.  
  
“Very.”  
  
“I thought so.”  
  
“Is this how this thing is going to go, you making fun of me for eternity?” Jared mumbles, because, hey, a guy has the right to know what he’s in for from the beginning.  
  
Jensen just smirks. Jared sighs. This is already going so well.  
  
“So, how was your day?” is the next thing Jensen asks, and Jared almost chokes on a bite of cupcake.  
  
“Aren’t we skipping, like, I don’t know, about ten million steps here?”  
Jensen frowns. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, throw in a few  _sweeties_ , and we’ll be ready for the matching Christmas sweaters by the end of this cupcake.”  
  
Jensen’s lips curve into a small smile, to Jared’s surprise – he’s pretty sure he would have possibly decked his date by now.  
  
“Jared,” he says, in a small tone, which he probably also uses to talk to small children and scared animals. “Yes, this is a date.”  
  
Jared ticks one of the checkboxes on the list of tonight’s questions.  
  
Jensen continues. “But there are no expectations. You don’t have to behave – you don’t have to  _be_  a certain way. We’re just talking. I don’t expect you to jump into my lap because I gave you a cupcake.”  
  
Jared nearly chokes again. The eyes on the murderous smiley face look at him, disappointed.  
  
“First, presumptuous,” Jared considers his voice not cracking a major victory. “And second, very confident.”  
  
“But you like it.”  
  
Jared wisely stays silent, because, yeah, the answer’s all too obvious on that.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out grudgingly.  
  
He knows he’s being a dick. But it rattles him, how well Jensen seems to be dealing with him, how good he’s taking Jared’s snappiness – he actually looks like he’s enjoying it. And that flatters Jared, it makes that stupid warmth spread through his chest again, but the questions are still swirling through his head, stomping around like a bright neon pink elephant.  
  
“I had time to get used to it,” Jensen throws around a bite of cupcake, and Jared’s eyes probably glaze over watching those lips painted with frosting.  
  
When he crash-lands back on earth, he actually thinks about Jensen’s answer.  
  
Right. The bond. They’re mated. Jensen can read his mind.  
  
That will certainly come in handy. If they had to rely on Jared’s abilities at communicating, they’d probably kill each other in the first week.  
  
“You promised me the story,” Jared says, because he needs to understand something, to make sense of why those hypnotic eyes have him under a spell.  
  
Jensen’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles.  
  
“I did. And I will tell you. I promise.”  
  
Jared deflates. “When?”  
  
“When you’ll believe me.”  
  
Whatever that means. Jared thinks he has a high tolerance for weird.  
  
“That doesn’t seem fair.”  
  
Jensen arches an eyebrow.  
  
 “You know all about me,” Jared explains, and Jensen shifts forward.  
  
“I know facts, Jared. That means nothing.”  
  
“Still.”  
  
The minute movement of Jensen’s fingers drumming their way forward doesn’t pass unnoticed. And he knows Jensen can’t help it, because his own body is screaming at him to get closer to Jensen’s, by whatever means.  
  
“I had a very vivid imagination as a child,” Jensen says after a while.  
  
When Jared raises his head to look at him, Jensen is still the confident man he first met, but there’s an edge of caution, of unsureness and doubt that don’t fit with his strong features.  
  
“Contrary to what you’re trying to downplay, this is very interesting information. Please continue.”  
  
Jensen laughs, small and shy.  
  
“I asked every question imaginable. The whys, the hows. I drove my parents crazy.”  
  
Jensen’s hand finally reaches Jared’s, their fingers brush, and the touch is welcome in a familiar way.  
  
“When I was old enough, books blew my mind. So many entire worlds made from all the same letters. And more. It felt – it wasn’t that I was immersed in their universe, but they made mine brighter, better.”  
  
Jared smiles, and maybe for the first time since he’s met Jensen, it’s entirely genuine, without any questions and worries behind it.  
  
“That makes sense.”  
  
Jared doesn’t think there’ll come a day when he’ll get tired of hearing Jensen laugh.  
  
“More than you know,” Jensen confesses. “My ability – it allows me to explore things I never would have guessed existed, things that I couldn’t even imagine when I was a kid.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
Jensen looks at him.  
  
“I’m just surprised you’re actually capable of speaking about yourself in full sentences.”  
  
Jensen smiles at him and the world narrows down to two people and a single feeling.  
  
“When you’ve heard all of my stories, you’ll get tired of me talking.”  
  
Jared, despite his most innate instinct, dares to doubt it.  
  
“So, then, one story at a time, like you want. And right now, to hear more, I’d do anything.”  
  
Jensen’s eyes flash dangerously.  
  
Jared responds the way his isolated teen years have taught him to, and blushes furiously.  
  
“You’re making it harder than I thought it would be,” Jensen says, a bit strangled.  
  
“Thank you. It’s a special talent. I’m very proud of it,” Jared babbles, because that’s what you do when you’re the most socially awkward genetically superior being.  
  
“I don’t – I didn’t think –“ Jensen continues like he didn’t even hear Jared speaking, “I didn’t know  _this_  is the way it would feel.”  
  
“That bad?” Jared asks, and he wants for it to be a joke, and he wants to stop making it a joke, but it’s old habits, and when they say old habits die hard, Jared thinks they’re severely understating it.  
  
Jensen shakes his head, unfazed.  
  
“The intensity –“ Jensen mutters and  _shudders_  like there’s live current going through him.  
  
Bright side: Jensen can communicate very well in nonverbal gestures and half-sentences.  
  
Bad thing: Jared is not entirely convinced either of them is going to get out intact.  
  
  


~

  
  
When Jared glances out the window, it’s dark and the bakery’s closing. And yet, they’re still talking. Still babbling on about anything and everything.  
  
They’re alone, and Jared’s surprised to see that nobody’s rushing them to the exit.  
  
Then he sees the knowing smile Gen, the cashier, gives Jensen while she closes the register, and everything makes sense.  
  
“You work here,” Jared deadpans, because it took an embarrassingly long time for an agent of the FBI to figure out his date/boyfriend/eternal mate is entirely too familiar with the surroundings.  
  
Jensen nods, and his eyes light up.  
  
“I love it here,” Jensen says, and Jared’s fascinated by the intensity in it – another kind, a passion that Jared can hear, almost  _feel_. “I make cakes. The ones for special occasions.”  
  
Well. Jared almost expects unicorns to come barging in and rainbows to shoot out of the sky.  
  
“Huh,” is Jared’s standard response.  
  
Jensen laughs. “You didn’t expect that.”  
  
Jared shakes his head. “Nope. No, I didn’t. You think you know a guy…”  
  
Jensen cocks his head, searching for something in Jared’s eyes.  
  
Jared figures it out.  
  
“I think it’s kind of cool, actually,” and it’s the absolute truth, but for some reason, it comes up empty of meaning. “I just –“  
  
The fact that Jared makes assumptions is understandable by the nature of his job, but that doesn’t make it excusable.  
  
“It’s all right, Jared,” Jensen says, and puts his hand over Jared’s. Jared’s momentarily too surprised to react. “I understand. I thought it would be good for our first official date – showing you exactly who you got stuck with.”  
  
Jared laughs, but it’s small, reserved, more about the relief of not having screwed up irreparably.  
  
“Those aren’t the words I would go with.”  
  
Jensen quirks an eyebrow, and there’s a faint smile, just a curve of his lips. “And you thought the smiley faces weren’t working.”  
  
Jared laughs, open and dimpled.  
  
 _Tall, green eyes, and freckled_  is not perfect – he’s flawed, human in all the ways that matter, and still, he’s the most amazing man Jared has ever met.  
  
And that’s when it hits.  
  
“Oh my God. The coffeeshop. Three years ago –  _Tall, green_ – Sophia.”  
  
Jensen stops, confused, but quickly tracks the origin of the conversation. He smiles self-consciously.  
  
“She has become a friend. She was a huge help in this.”  
  
Jared tries to breathe. “You’re not the suspect in a robbery.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“She recognized you.”  
  
Jensen nods. “She helped me.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Why a million things. Frustratingly, Jensen already has the answer ready for him.  
  
“Because if it was any other way, you wouldn’t have agreed to it.”  
  
 True. But – “That’s –“  
  
“Wrong?” Jensen completes bitterly. “Yes. It is. But I’ve tried. So many times. Years. Lifetimes. Jared, you have to understand something about me if this is to go any further – I won’t always do the right thing, but I’ll always have the best intentions.”  
  
Jensen pauses, and looks right at Jared. “Is that good enough for you?  _Will_  it be?”  
  
Jared doesn’t have to think too much about it. He answers honestly.  
  
“I don’t know. Ask me in another ten years.”  
  
Jensen seems surprised by the answer. Jared tangles their fingers together on the table, and he starts asking about cake making.  
  
  


~

  
  
Jensen’s so close to him.  
  
He smells of leather and something sweet, and his thumb is stroking Jared’s skin, tracing the two parallel lines, the mark on Jared’s palm that’s identical to Jensen’s. Jared feels cold, there are chills racing up his spine, and yet, he can’t breathe, it’s too hot, too much to take it all in.  
  
“I want to kiss you,” Jensen whispers, and Jared vibrates with the need for it.  
  
“On one condition’” Jared bargains.  
  
Jensen’s eyes betray the smile hidden in the dim light.  
  
“There’s a next time,” Jared continues.  
  
Jensen huffs. “That’s not a condition, that’s a given.”  
  
“I wasn’t finished.”  
  
“Please, continue.”  
  
“Promise me you’ll never kiss me the same. Today, tomorrow, next week. If this is for the long run, promise me you’ll at least try to make it interesting.”  
  
It’s stupid. It’s a joke, and it’s mostly not, because if he’s going to do this, give in, he’s going to do it with abandon. There’s too many things trying to fit in his head – his heart – unpracticed words that seem to have a new meaning. Hope, brighter than all of it.  
  
It’s a new feeling.  
  
And Jensen kisses him, just a touch of soft lips, but then – then Jared’s not thinking. For the first time in his life, he’s not thinking. It’s just feeling, pure, raw, and it leaves his body trembling, his hands scratching at Jensen’s back, trying to grasp this newfound reality.  
  
When Jensen pulls back, all Jared can see is the liquid heat in Jensen’s eyes, and Jared has the strangest realization that it’s not about the kiss.  
  
“I promise,” Jensen vows, and, Jared, despite everything life has taught him about trusting people, finds himself believing in it.


	6. Part Five

She doesn’t tell him anything.  
  
The blue eyes are empty, and it’s just a grey room, a metal box, a table and a chair, and handcuffs to a life that slowly slips from him.  
  
“I can help you,” he says to the girl who just days ago was ready to kill him.  
  
“No one can help me.”  
  
It’s sad, how many times Jared’s heard her say it.  
  
“There’s always a way to help someone. It’s just a question of accepting it,” Jared speaks, with conviction, because he’s living proof of it.  
  
She studies him for a while. She has a smile on her face – small, pitying, cruel.  
  
“Do you believe in fate, Agent Padalecki?”  
  
He has a six foot one reason to, apparently.  
  
“I believe you can’t build a castle on the foundation of a house, but you can decorate it in ten million different ways.”  
  
She laughs.  
  
Jared’s an idiot. Message received.  
  
“I am to understand that you think we make our own choices?” she asks bitterly, having an answer already.  
  
Jared doesn’t bother debating.  
  
“What has fate got to do with you trying to blow up a train station?”  
  
She sighs. “It astonishes, how limited you all seem to be.”  
  
“Limited enough that two of your friends are dead and the other is nearly.”  
  
Jared’s cruelly pleased to see she’s not made of steel. The thud of the cuffs hitting the metal table resonates, and she leans forward, hair falling over her face and bright blue eyes seething with fury.  
  
“You will pay for that, Agent Padalecki, make no mistake.”  
  
Jared leans back, smiles.  
  
“How? You’re sitting here.”  
  
“You think we are the only ones?”  
  
When she laughs again, chills race up Jared’s spine.  
  
“The Traveler will suffer the consequence for his actions, whatever the price we pay for it.”  
  
“Who  _is_  the Traveler? What did he do to you?” Jared asks, though he knows the images he had seen in her mind have something to do with it.  
  
“He interfered,” she says tiredly. “You believe we have choices, that we choose our own path, ultimately. That’s not true. Fate is written before we ever have a chance to do anything – and the Traveler brings disorder with him in his selfish quest. He’ll never have done everything directly – and yet, he’s responsible for entire universes collapsing.”  
  
Jared listens intently as she continues. “He did that to mine. Do you know, how it feels watching your world just come apart, break like glass? He does not understand, the Travelers are meant to be watchers of the Universes – not participants – a vow he has broken, time and time again.”  
  
“So, let me get this – he destroyed your universe, so you decided to … what? Blow up a train station?”  
  
She shakes her head. “That wasn’t a regular explosive device, Agent. It might have looked like it, but the power in it – it would have brought death to this world, light in its purest form, causing non-existence.”  
  
Right. So, the blue wire, good thinking. He’s thankful otherworldly bombs operate on the same basic principles.  
  
“Well, at least this is starting to make sense now,” he says, because if the last few days have taught him anything, they have thought him to accept the unthinkable.  
  
She leans back in the chair, looks up defiantly. “There’s always a price to pay for our choices, Agent Padalecki. Ask your friend who collapsed in our little meeting.”  
  
Aldis. Jared’s hands ball into fists on their own accord, and he steps forward unconsciously.  
  
“He’ll die slowly – but peacefully, if that easies your mind the littlest bit.”  
  
Red – he sees red, his mind dissolves to a single feeling. Fury.  
  
He won’t do anything. Not here, not now, not for this.  
  
That doesn’t change the fact that he is capable of it.  
  
There’s a buzzing sound, and the metal door to the cell opens.  
  
People. Words. He doesn’t wait for them to say that someone is taking over for him.  
  
He leaves.  
  
The anger subsides slowly as he lets the warm sunlight of the morning wash over him, but the uneasy feeling stays long after the sun has set, seeps into his dreams that night.  
  
  


~

  
  
“Aren’t long walks kind of cliché?”  
  
Jensen’s hands seem to sink deeper in their pockets. He frowns. “I thought you would like it.”  
Jared does. It’s quiet his head in a way it can never be if he’s in a crowd.  
  
“I do. A lot, actually,” Jared admits, because Jensen’s trying, and if nothing else, this thing between them – it deserves a chance. “So. Tell me about your day,” he throws around a smile, and he’s rewarded with Jensen’s surprised laugh.  
  
He catches on fast. “I fully expect to be addressed to as  _honey_  from now on.”  
  
“Keep dreaming,” Jared says, but he ends up with Jensen’s hand in his at the end of their walk.  
  
  


~

  
  
Tom asks if Jared made any sense out of what the bomber told him.  
  
He does it when they visit Aldis at the hospital, in the minutes that turn into hours just waiting, watching, hoping.  
  
She’s looking for a Traveler, Jared explains.  
  
He doesn’t know what that means. Tom doesn’t, either. They’re all playing catch-up in a game where the stakes are too high.  
  
She wanted revenge. It’s a motive, it’s something concrete, palpable – enough that Tom doesn’t ask any more questions about the case.  
  
He does ask about Jensen. How does Jared feel about him?  
  
Jared doesn’t have answers.  
  
  


~

  
It’s listening to music that finally causes Jensen to let out pieces of his story.  
  
  


~

  
_Debussy – Arabesque No. 1_   
  
_“I couldn’t live without music. Could you? You’d die a million times before you’d get to live. I don’t understand it. I never did. Notes on a sheet…that never made sense to me. Which is also why you should never see me dancing. I don’t get rhythm, and sound. For me, it’s just the feeling you get when you hear that first second of a song, the thrill of succumbing to something outside of yourself that understands you too well – the way it can be soothing, or it can peel the skin off your bones inch by inch.”_   
  
_Jensen drifts, but his eyes never leave Jared’s._   
  
_“Time…it refuses to exist when I listen to music. What does it say about me, that I dream of that single second, wish that I could see a universe defined by a single feeling?”_   
  
  


_~_

  
  
  
“E-X-I-L-E. That’s four, plus eight, all times three, because there’s a triple word score,” Jared calculates dutifully.  
  
“That’s thirty-six.”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
Jensen mumbles something along the lines of  _fine_  but it’s so low, Jared can’t be sure of it.  
  
“That’s a total of two hundred and sixty for me” Jared finishes adding.  
  
“Excellent,” Jensen deadpans.  
  
“And the grand total of – wait for it,” Jared says gleefully, “two hundred and fifty six for you.  _Honey._ ”  
  
“Yes. I am so happy.”  
  
Jared bats his eyelashes, grins. “Aw. Did I upset you with my superior vocabulary skills?”  
  
“Putting a D at the end of everything does not count as  _superior vocabulary skills,_ ” Jensen grumbles while gathering all the letters from the board sullenly.  
  
“There’s a joke in there, somewhere, but I’m just too happy with my victory to sink to it.”  
  
“Is this going to be a thing?” Jensen asks, looking at Jared purposefully.  
  
Jared was never good at winning gracefully. “Me rubbing it in? Yes, yes it will.”  
  
“Wonderful. I’m looking forward to it.”  
  
Jared smiles. “Come here.”  
  
Jared kisses the pout off Jensen’s lips, and after that, there’s considerably less talking and competitiveness.  
  


~

  
  
_Dire Straits – Ride Across The River_   
  
_“Wars are all the same, Jared. So many, many wars…The most beautiful places marred by scars of battle, by blood, by hatred… that’s the only constant.  Soldiers sacrificing their life for the cause. Mercenaries who do it for the money. There is no difference. In the end, it’s all death.”_   
  


~

  
  
Jared tells Jensen about his family, his Major Crimes team, Sophia, Danneel – people that matter to him.  
  
Jensen has no one to talk about. No one cared about in the present tense – just memories that he does not share, that darken his features and bring sadness.  
  
Jensen’s lost and Jared’s the one who has been found.  
  
  


~

  
  
_Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Lucky Man_   
  
_“There’s a legend, a legend that explains the creation of mates. It says we’re bound like the earth is bound by the sun – we couldn’t exist without it, without the laws it lays down.”_   
  
_“Tell it to me.”_   
  
_Jensen laughs._   
  
_“It is said that the first of our kind were a pair whose love knew no bounds. The sort of love that brightens everything around it, that lasts even in death. There was only one rule, and that was not to look at the sky in the day, only at night time. And they listened. For a long time, they listened. But one day, the sun was just too beautiful, too bright – so one of them raised his gaze. He watched as waves of fire trickled down. Time became a notion defined only by the sunrise. The one who looked took the sun in his hands, too haunted by the memory of it to let go of it ever again. He was bound. The Other cried, tears that spread on the night canvas, beads of light that crystallized into stars. And we, flawed, weak, we’re born out of the last light of these stars before they die, spread throughout the universes and cursed to find the hands that hold our sun.”_   
  
  


_~_

  
  
“The Traveler, he’s here –“  
  
“Yeah, yeah, already heard that one,” Tom mutters under his breath.  
  
“You don’t understand, he’s doomed us all,” the man with clawed fingers says.  
  
Yet another fanatic claiming that a universe-traversing madman is going to end the world.  
  
Jared’s life is so fucked up.  
  
The most annoying thing is, for all the cryptic warnings, there’s nothing concrete, no description, no explanation of how this Traveler is going to destroy everything. Just extremists who have decided they want to end it first.  
  
The doors of the cell close with a metallic thud, and the screams reverberate off the walls.  
  
Jared’s team is doing the best they can.  
  
At least, that’s what Jared tells himself when he closes his eyes.  
  
Jared can almost ignore the haunted faces as he falls asleep.  
  


~

  
  
_Al di Meola, Paco de Lucia and John McLaughlin – Friday Night in San Francisco_   
  
_The world fades out of focus, dissolves to the trails of kisses Jensen draws with his mouth on Jared’s  back._   
  
_Jared shudders when cold air brushes his skin, he lets out a shaky breath when Jensen sinks down to his knees. His own legs feel weak, but Jensen’s strong hands on his hips hold him up, calloused fingers stroking the ridges of his hipbones, tiny movement with a single purpose, to keep Jared bound to earth, to Jensen._   
  
_And then it doesn’t matter, there’s just the slow drag of Jensen’s tongue and Jared’s sweaty hands balling into fists, slipping off the wall._   
  
_Rough swipes of tongue that leave him panting, breathless, struggling not to make a sound._   
  
_He only screams when Jensen pushes into him, rough, fast, biting into his shoulder, careless and painful, but nothing is better than Jensen’s solid weight fused to him, and he’s so full, so good, so –_   
  
_Hot puffs of air in his ear, whispers of his name, and responses stuttered out._   
  
_Time begins to exist eternities after that, when he feels Jensen’s come dripping down his thighs, and his body stiffens, his eyes flutter shut, and the shivers running through his body make him think he’ll finally come apart, like Jensen intended all along._   
  
  


~

  
  
Sophia watches him warily.  
  
“I won’t apologize.”  
  
Jared sighs. “I know. I’m not asking you to.”  
  
“It came out alright.”  
  
He laughs bitterly. “Barely. And I still haven’t figured it all out.”  
  
She puts a hand on his shoulder, and Jared stops abruptly, because there are tears in her bright hazel eyes.  
  
“Jared, you don’t know what it’s like. If I had the smallest chance – she starts, but then cuts herself off, a look of guilt passing through her features, “I love my husband. I love my kids. But there’s a part of me that knows it’s not all it was supposed to be. Some nights I lay awake thinking about someone out there with the same mark on his palm, and I hate everything I have become. I dream of a different life, I dream of someone that understands  _what_  I am, that wants to be free as much as me. And I know, I’ll never find something like that. So I had to try. For you, I had to.”  
  
Jared doesn’t know what to say to that.  
  
 _It’s only people that give meaning to facts_ , is what Jensen said to him.  
  
Maybe he’s right.  
  
He’s lucky. Funny, if you asked him that a month ago, he would have said that Sophia is.  
  
Jared pulls Sophia into a hug, and thinks he’ll have good company on the road to hell, best intentions and all that.  
  
  


~

  
  
_Led Zeppelin – Black Dog_   
  
_“Can you imagine a world where there’s no Zeppelin?” Jensen asks, eyes playful and voice rough._   
  
  


~

  
  
Days turn into weeks, and there are still so many things Jared doesn’t understand.  
  
He doesn’t want to ask, because it might shatter the illusion, he might get an answer that takes away the completeness he’s found.  
  
Because he couldn’t be the same, not without Jensen, not after the first minutes spent with him –  
  
He felt it from the beginning, the way that Jensen changed him.  
  
And he’s happy.  
  
Somehow, in all this, he realizes that truth. And the most incredible thing is, Jensen seems to be, too.  
  
It isn’t a happiness measured in euphoric, too-bright moments – it’s a happiness of tranquility and calmness, one he finds every time he sees the crinkles in the corners of Jensen’s eyes.  
  
Jared doesn’t want to call it love. It can’t be, not when he doesn’t know, can’t trust everything. When he doesn’t want to ask. When he’s too afraid he already knows the answers.  
  
But it’s close, and that is what surprises him the most in the afternoons he spends with Jensen listening to old records and drifting into other worlds.

 


	7. Part Six

This one is surprisingly normal – well, at least what’s been passing for normal lately.  
  
Just your average, living-in-his-parents-basement psychotic criminal slash mad scientist that definitely shouldn’t have been allowed to get his degree in mechanical engineering. He wants to turn the city into dust. For what, still to be determined. There have been way too many reasons to choose from lately.  
  
Jared forces himself into a roiling, chaotic mind. It’s unnervingly simple, just a plan, repeated instructions and a loud, ringing sound surrounding it all.  
  
He signs towards Tom and Adrianne, who nod, and take off after the guy.  
  
Jared must find the device.  
  
It’s not hard to. Trouble is, for as much luck as he had with the girl and the bomb – well, this one most definitely doesn’t have any blue wires.  
  
Or any buttons at all. It’s just a box, granite gray and numbers on bright green screen, counting down. He saw in the man’s mind what it will do – send out a psychic shock wave that will overwhelm and annihilate the consciousness of thousands.  
  
Superiors might survive.  
  
It’s an easy solution, after all.  
  
Jared’s the one who has a chance.  
  
He feels cold for a moment. Then it’s too bright, too hot, too much.  
  
The hard ground meets his fingertips just as Jared closes his eyes.  
  


~

  
  
  
The air is heavy, filled with a murky fog that presses on his chest. Jared can feel his bones grinding, muscles turning to ash, fire burning in his lungs.  
  
He coughs, struggles to breathe, but he can’t, and everything starts to crumble into a fine silvery dust.  
  
The world darkens around the edges. He hears screams.  
  
Inside himself, outside – voices, faint, indistinct, lost in the flames that scratch at his consciousness, tiny figures of crimson that frantically dance, finally escape.  
  
Jared doesn’t want to believe it’s going to end like this.  
  
And yet, that’s the only truth that sets itself in stone, unmarred by the firestorm. Jared tries to breathe, tries to hang on –  
  
There’s no point.  
  
He falls, slow yet all too quick, reality losing consistency inch by inch, until –  
  
  


~

  
_Air._  
  
 _Sky, creamy white, far away, distant._  
  
 _Ringing in his ears, deafening silence, screams._  
  
 _He breathes._  
  
 _One, two, three._  
  
 _White, all around. Cold. Clean._  
  
Alive _is a question of believing it._  
  
  


_~_

  
  
_Time is endless._   
  
_Time doesn’t exist._   
  
_Jared walks until the end starts with nothing, and the Nothing starts with him._   
  
  


_~_

  
  
  
_Music._   
  
_Guitar chords, finding their meaning._   
  
_Warmth. His palm, burning._   
  
_Jensen, in front of him._   
  
  


_~_

  
  
_“Are you – no, this is real.”_   
  
_Jared speaks, he finds a voice crawling in the void, hoarse and uneven._   
  
_Jensen doesn’t hear. Jensen has his hands balled into fists, eyes ablaze and body vibrating._   
  
_But Jared doesn’t feel anything._   
  
_The white of the limitless has seeped through him._   
  
_“You are okay,” Jensen whispers, because questions don’t mean anything here. He doesn’t touch Jared – Jensen knows, understands, somehow, what this is._   
  
_“Tell me what’s happening.” Jared speaks, and he feels far away, detached from the sound, and still he falls prey to all the memories._   
  
_“Please.”_   
  
_Jensen nods, and suddenly, it’s so clear to Jared – Jensen’s waited for this._   
  
_This is what was hiding in all the things Jensen’s ever said to him._   
  
_Here they are, standing, sitting, being nothing, being everything._   
  
_And Jared wonders why, why now, because he’s finally free, when he has a reason not to be._   
  
  


~

  
  
_“I was on a swing. I couldn’t have been more than five or six. I was…happy. Happy in the way only innocents can be. And then – I wasn’t.”_   
  
_Jensen makes an all-encompassing gesture with his hands, and Jared’s surprised to find tears in Jensen’seyes. And yet, he doesn’t cry. He stands tall, keeps his voice even when he speaks._   
  
_“Slipping through the canvas of the universes. I was in a world that’s in-between, that’s not part of anything. I had no idea what was happening.”_   
  
_He turns towards Jared. “What is the first memory of you using your ability?”_   
  
_“Curling in a fetal position, crying, and begging my mom to stop all the noises,” Jared answers honestly._   
  
_Jensen nods, and Jared sees compassion, pain for him._   
  
_He doesn’t understand how that can be._   
  
_Jensen continues. “I got lost. To begin with the ending, I never got back to my family. I travelled to worlds so horrible, I would have become the darkness in me if I stayed. I travelled through beautiful worlds, worlds that have been kind to me, and yet I was still empty.”_   
  
_Jared listens to a better man than him._   
  
_“One face haunted me, gave me hope that I could find where I belonged, home, new beginning.”_   
  
_“Mine,” Jared finishes, convinced._   
  
_“But you see, I’ve met a thousand Jareds. I’ve met you time and time again, and every time, I tried to convince myself this was the one that I was searching for. I fell in love with some of them, and they’ve fallen in love with me – but still your face haunted my dreams even as I was with one of you. So I had to keep going.”_   
  
_Jared chases the feeling of a sunny summer morning, but it escapes between his fingertips._   
  
_“Until I met you. I saw you outside of your classroom, sitting on the ground, leaning on the wall, with your eyes closed, listening in.”_   
  
_Jared remembers. The early days at college, when he didn’t trust himself to handle anything._   
  
_“The way I felt then –“ Jensen exhales, searches for words to help him. “I knew. You were my One, you were my Other,” he locks his gaze with Jared’s unflinching one._   
  
_“So you waited,” Jared says, and he’s surprised to find the statement devoid of any emotion._   
  
_Jensen shrugs. “A few years didn’t seem that long after everything I’ve traveled through, the space and time I’ve spent looking for you.”_   
  
_“You’re the Traveler they’re talking about.”_   
  
_It’s so far away. Another lifetime._   
  
_Jared identifies as guilt the emotion that he sees in Jensen’s eyes._   
  
_“I am,” he admits._   
  
_“They’re trying to kill you.”_   
  
_“They’re not trying to kill me. They’re trying to survive, even if that means they die.”_   
  
_Jared doesn’t see the difference. “Why?”_   
  
_Jensen sighs. “Because any universe I travel through, if it’s not my true home, will irreversibly be altered.”_   
  
_“And that’s a bad thing?”_   
  
_“It can be. It could collapse upon itself, disintegrate completely.”_   
  
_“So you’ve killed worlds,” Jared supplies, and Jensen flinches, but answers honestly._   
  
_“Looking for you. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize what was happening behind me. And then they started coming after me. Revenge, retaliation…save the universe from me, supposedly. I was hidden here for a long time while I waited for you. They didn’t find me until now. And I have a feeling that they won’t stop, now that they did.”_   
  
_“I don’t understand what that means for me,” Jared confesses._   
  
_Rational. Selfish._   
  
_“It means that you have a choice,” Jensen says, and takes a few steps back._   
  
_“It doesn’t seem like it.”_   
  
_Jensen smiles sadly. “This is your creation, Jared. Remember the failsafes I told you about? This is yours.”_   
  
_Jared huffs. “This is just empty space.”_   
  
_“It would be, for someone with a mind like yours. You crave quiet and control, so that’s what you have. It’s a world in between, something you can access because you’re bonded to me, but which I can’t enter unless you let me in.”_   
  
_Jared thinks for a second. “Apparently, I have.”_   
  
_Jensen nods. “It – I was the last thing you thought about before you –” Jensen pauses._   
  
_“Died?”_   
  
_“You didn’t…die. But you came close, otherwise this place wouldn’t be possible. Only strong emotions can create a pocket between the worlds – and the will to live is the most powerful.”_   
  
_“So what happens now?”_   
  
_Jensen touches his hand, brushes a thumb over his wrist. “Whatever you want.”_   
  
  
  


_~_

  
  
_It’s empty again._   
  
_Jared’s alone with the white on the nonexistent walls. No emotions, no intrusive thoughts._   
  
_It feels so good._   
  
_After a life spent battling all the voices, demons that he kept on the leash by ceaseless vigilance – to be alone is a bliss he never dreamed would be possible._   
  
_So then why does it feel like there’s a piece of him missing?_   
  
_How can he feel at all?_   
  
  
  


_~_

  
  
_“Are you sure?” Jensen asks, because that’s the kind of man he is._   
  
_Jared nods._   
  
_He is. It is a choice. One he makes without looking back._


	8. Epilogue

“Can I open my eyes now?” Jared asks.  
  
“Nope,” Jensen says cheerfully.  
  
“I am worried about this. Just so you know. The whole mysterious thing, not helping my anxiety.”  
  
Jensen strengthens the hold on Jared’s hip. “I’m here. Besides, it’s just a few more steps.” He guides Jared forward with the other hand on his back, warm and comforting. “Here.”  
  
Jared opens his eyes dutifully.  
  
There, on the table in the grey living room of Jensen’s apartment, is a cake.  
  
Shaped like the sun being cupped by hands.  
  
“That’s for you”, Jensen whispers.  
  
“Looks – um, looks delicious,” Jared says after a long silence, because he’s the same Jared, socially deficient, even bonded with his mate.  
  
And Jared hopes that there never will be a day when Jensen won’t laugh at him.  
  
After Jared finishes two pieces, because, turns out, Jensen does have the power to make magic cakes – and probably magical Danishes as well – he is suddenly confused by what’s missing.  
  
“The moon. Shouldn’t there be a moon, or at least stars, or something?”  
  
Jensen smiles, takes Jared’s hand in his.  
  
When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.  
  
“I thought we could see the stars on another sky.”  
  
Jared inhales sharply. He knows what that means. With the help of Jensen’s touch, he can cross the worlds with him.  
  
He doesn’t feel ready.  
  
“What do you say?” Jensen asks, smiling like a lunatic.  
  
It kind of hits Jared then, how a world without Jensen doesn’t exist for him now.  
  
Jared says yes, and when reality dissolves around him, he thinks there never was another ending to their story.  
  
  


~

  
  
The waves meet the cliffs with a dull thud, fall like a piece of satin, smooth and hopeless against unwavering rock. They rise again, eager, devoted to a yearning that defines all they are. The beads of glass clink when they reach the ground. It’s black, and the sand is gold, and Jensen’s body feels warm under Jared’s hands.  
  
Jared feels his heartbeat, and there’s music above them all, something that he could listen to for years and centuries and still fall in love with his One again.  
  
Jensen’s eyes flutter closed as soon as one of Jared’s hands move to the back of his head, where they trace countless paths, as Jared’s fingernails graze his scalp.  
  
“I love you,” Jared tells the sea and the horizon made of clouds.  
  
The whisper disturbs the quiet, and still, Jared feels calm.  
  
Jensen puts a hand over Jared’s heart. He doesn’t open his eyes.  
  
“We’re going home,” Jared tells Jensen, and this time, it’s a promise. 


End file.
